More news from Iraq:
Army plans call for keeping about 100,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq through March 2006, a senior Army officer said Friday. The plans reflect concerns of senior commanders that stabilizing Iraq could be more difficult than anticipated.
The officer warned that maintaining a force of that size in Iraq beyond then would cause the Army to “really start to feel the pain” from stresses on overtaxed active-duty soldiers as well as Reserve and National Guard troops.
The officer was offering a senior-level Army view on the issue. The size of any future American force in Iraq ultimately will be decided by the president and a new provisional Iraqi government.
Expect the Democrat’s faux ‘Bush is going to cut and run’ meme to be temporarily sidetracked with a return to grave concerns that we have no plan. If only the UN were involved.
The Commissar
This may be just my perception, but during November, the worst month for casualties since April, has the ‘quagmire’ bit died down a liitle?
“Vital interests” or the public peceptions of htem are critical here. The “Bush is going to cut & run, call in the blue helmets” meme is a CLEAR acknowledgement by the Dems that our vital interests ARE involved.
Once that is granted, it’s hard for them to bitch and moan about casualties.
Kimmitt
Okay, I’m going to say this really slowly so everyone here can understand.
There is a debate within the Democratic Party about the best course of action in Iraq.
Some Democrats believe that we should essentially leave immediately, because the invasion was basically immoral and failure is inevitable. Some believe that President Bush did the right thing to invade, but that his Administration has not been as successful during the occupation as it should be, and they believe they have other plans. Still others believe that we should not have invaded in the first place, but now that we have, we have acquired new vital interests in the area that we did not have previously.
You are therefore going to get a lot of conflicting statements on Iraq from Democrats and their preferred candidates. They will make more sense if you see the Democratic Party as what America ought to be — a marketplace of ideas.